James Talarico

Three, it's a misunderstanding of Christianity because the whole idea of Jesus's movement was that he was simplifying the law, right?

He simplified it into two commandments, love God and love neighbor.

Those are the only two commandments that we Christians should keep our focus on.

And Jesus regularly got into conflicts with the religious authorities, right?

Jesus is always getting in trouble with the church of his time because he is rejecting legalism, right?

and embracing the spirit of the law, which is loving your neighbor as yourself.

And so in our modern context, that should mean loving our gay neighbors as ourselves.

And so to me, you know, when I'm looking at the teachings of Jesus, I think it's very clear how we should treat those who are different, those who are left out, those who are on the edges.

And I think trying to take the Hebrew tradition and interpret it for our own political benefit really does a lot of violence to that scripture.

I mean, the word homosexuality wasn't even invented until the 19th century.

So if you see the word homosexuality in your Bible, that's an interpretation.

That's a translation and using a word that didn't even come around until thousands of years later.

It could be a whole host of things.

I mean, some of these things are put in place for health reasons.

Obviously, they didn't have modern medicine, and so—

You know, if there were things that were considered hazardous to your physical well-being, sometimes those were included in the law.

Preserving family structure, right?

You obviously had a patriarchal structure in the ancient world where it wasn't just about your commitment to your wife.

It really was about, you know—

how land and wealth we passed on to children.